People protest during a rally to protect net neutrality as they voice their opposition to the impending FCC vote, outside the Federal Building in Los Angeles, California, on November 28, 2017. (Photo: MARK RALSTON / AFP / Getty Images)
In the beginning were the words.
This is the story of the long progress of humanity from the early days of opposable thumbs to the first farmer, the first builder, the first cured disease, the first literature in its second edition, the first time secondhand information was shared as a means of expanding knowledge, the first time anything was read for the first time by a second person who then passed it on, because they could.
This is about the internet as it exists today.
It began when Bi Sheng invented the first moveable type, using materials made of porcelain during the Northern Song dynasty in China around 1040 AD. Some 300 years later, metal print books were created during the Goryeo dynasty in Korea. Less than 100 years later, Johannes Gutenberg invented the moveable-type printing press in Europe, using materials that remained standard in the process for more than half a millennium. The Bible he printed, and the machine he used to do it, are widely viewed as the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, the Renaissance and an explosion of learning that transformed the world.
It was no longer just the priests and wealthy elite who had access to information. The world had the words on a page now, and slowly but surely everything changed, and changed again and then again. The only requirement for joining this ever-expanding new club was learning how to read. This was, and remains, no insignificant hurdle. Literacy has been power throughout the ages, right up to the modern era: Consider the relatively recent use of literacy tests to bar Black people from voting in the Jim Crow South. Poor people have historically and globally had less access to reading and education, yet another means of control.
Despite this, the flourishing of readily…